Field of Invention
The present disclosure is generally related to agricultural balers and, more particularly to a method and assembly for supplying bale identification tags 62 to bales of agricultural crop material.
Description of Related Art
For many years agricultural balers have been used to consolidate and package crop material so as to facilitate the storage and handling of the crop material for later use. Usually, a mower-conditioner cuts and conditions the crop material for windrow drying in the sun. When the cut crop material is properly dried, a baler travels along the windrow to picks up the crop material and forms it into bales. Pickups of the baler gather the cut and windrowed crop material from the ground then convey the cut crop material into a bale-forming chamber within the baler. A drive mechanism operates to activate the pickups, augers, and a rotor of the feed mechanism.
In conventional square balers include a bale forming chamber and a reciprocating plunger that slides into and out of the chamber. As the chamber receives loose hay material, the plunger slides into the chamber during a compaction stroke to compress the loose hay material into the form of a bale. A conventional round baler includes a bale forming chamber with a pair of opposing sidewalls with a series of belts, chains, and/or rolls that rotate and compress the crop material into a cylindrical shaped bale.
When the bale has achieved a desired size and density, a wrapping system may wrap the bale to ensure that the bale maintains its shape and density. For example, a twine wrapping apparatus may be provided to wrap the bale of crop material while still inside the bale forming chamber. A cutting or severing mechanism may be used to cut the twine once the bale has been wrapped. The wrapped bale may be ejected from the baler and onto the ground.
The ability to trace or track parameters of each bale may be useful to an end user. Baled products, such as hay or silage, may be fed to livestock, and the quality of the feed may be important to the diet of the livestock. For example, a higher quality feed may be fed to certain livestock, whereas feed with lesser quality may go to a different type of livestock. It may be desirable to trace where food products come from, what the livestock ate while it was being raised, etc. It is also desirable to be able to label each bale with other important properties, such as moisture content and nutritional value. Other potential parameters of interest include but are not limited to GPS Location when bale is tied, where the bale leaves the baler, farm name, farmer id, field name, preservative type, amount of preservative applied, etc. As a result, bale identification systems may be employed in the baling process for storing or otherwise retaining the parameters or quality of the crop so it can be provided to the end user. To identify a bale, it is known to attach a tag containing information such as the size, weight, and date of the bale. To identify a bale, it is known to attach a tag containing the information. However, improvements in the manner identification tags used to identify are affixed to a bale is desired.